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Tuesday, February 7, 2012

Who Do You Seek in the 1940 Census?

The countdown to the 1940 census release is approaching quickly. I was talking to my dad about this and he pitched an awesome blog topic on the subject, so I'm posing the question to you:

When the 1940 census becomes available in April, who will you look up first?

I'll be looking for my paternal grandparents in suburban Los Angeles. My uncle will be in the census for the first time, and it marks my parents' generation being in the census. I'll have to wait for the 1950 census to find my own parents.

Special thanks to my dad for asking such a good question. Comment with your own answers below, or answer the question on your own blog and leave a link in my comments. I'd like to know who you want to find.

Speaking of the 1940 census, here's a great ad to get the word out that indexers are needed. I'm an indexer. Will you join me?

9 comments:

My parents are both in the 1930 census but I'm anxious to find my mom in the 1940 census. She thinks she was living with her great aunt at that time while her parents were going through a divorce. All she remembers is that they lived in either Oakland or Berkeley somewhere so I'll be starting with their address in 1930 to see if I can find them. Hopefully I can so I can fill in that blank for her.

My Dad first - this was the first census he appears on - with his parents and siblings still at home, then my mother and her first husband, then my maternal grandparents, and then my brickwall great-grandmother.

I can't decide who to look up first, my 16-year-old father in Massachusetts or my 5-year-old mother in Pittsburgh or my 13-year-old mother-in-law in New Jersey. I'll need the index to find my 17-year-old father-in-law in Akron, Ohio.

I have several cousins of my parents that moved away and no one remembers where they went. I want to try to track them down. I had a great uncle that went to California and wanted to be in cowboy movies. Don't ever know if he made it or what happened to him.

I have my parents in the 1920 and 1930 censuses, but the 1940 is the first one after they were married (they married in 1937). Your parents appeared first in the 1950 census? That's the one I will be looking for myself in!

It's my mom's first census, but I'll be looking for my dad's aunts and uncles - his grandfather died in 1937 (and grandmother had been gone for years), so it will be interesting to see what all these unmarried people did at that point in the family's life.

I will also be looking for my paternal grandparents. They got married in May of 1940. Luckily, I have their marriage license which lists both of their addresses. That will make finding them so much easier!